The Eden Project was just one of a series of famous landmarks around the world to turn pink for this global event - the others included the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the Niagra Falls, the Empire State Building in New York, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Constantine's Arch in Rome.
To transform Eden's Biomes, Sarah Griffith, Director of Corporate Communications for the Estee Lauder Companies, approached White Light Events both to design the lighting scheme, and to arrange for the lighting to be switched on remotely from London via satellite!
"Eden has been lit many times before," comments White Light Events' Production Manager, Jon Coventry, "often using Eden's own MBI floodlights. However, having worked on this event last year we knew that the switching on ceremony called for a lighting scheme that offered instant switch-on." Working with Ade Burt and John Wright of the Eden Project, Coventry therefore designed a scheme that used ten 2m Lunix Airstar balloons fitted with pink jackets. "The tungsten light sources in the Airstars allowed instant switch-on, while the helium balloons let the lightsources be positioned above the canopy of trees in the humid tropic biome, which normally obscures the light from ground-mounted units," Coventry explains. The MBI floodlights were also used as a preset, while a Robert Juliat Aramis followspot projected the Breast Cancer Awareness logo onto one of the dome's hexagonal panels.
With the switch-on to take place at the London nightclub Tramp, White Light Events contracted Globecast to provide a single camera and a satellite uplink truck in Cornwall and a downlink on the roof of the club in London. Inside the club, three LCD video projectors showed footage of the other landmarks around the world, while the fourth had a live feed from the Biomes. The countdown to the UK switch-on was led by Per Neuman, Managing Director of the Estee Lauder Companies, with John Wright in Cornwall receiving an audio feed of the countdown by telephone and giving the go command for the switch on via radio.
"All in all, a great success," comments Jon Coventry. "The only slightly confused people being the visitors to the Eden Project between the set-up day and the switch on - who probably wondered about the pink balloons floating above the green canopy!"
The Global Illumination Project is the initiative of the Estee Lauder Companies, founders of the Pink Ribbon Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the UK and forty countries around the world. The campaign is designed to draw attention to Breast Cancer, the disease that affects more women globally than any other cancer and for which there is still no cure. Further information can be found at the Breast Cancer Care website, www.breastcancercare.org.uk. Further information about White Light Events, specialists in lighting for events and exhibitions, can be found at www.whitelightevents.com.